Kentucky Curiosities: Quirky Characters, Roadside Oddities & Other Offbeat Stuff

by Vince Staten

Overview

This definitive collection of the Bluegrass State's odd, wacky, and most offbeat people, places, and things is filled with quirky photographs throughout and maps for each region. Kentucky Curiosities includes humorous state facts and amusing stories and serves as a combination almanac, off-the-wall travel guide, and wacky news gazette.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762769766
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/18/2012
Series:	Curiosities Series
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,022,017
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 5.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Vince Staten is the author of thirteen books, including the bestsellers Did Monkeys Invent the Monkey Wrench? and Jack Daniel’s Old-Time Barbecue Cookbook. He is a freelance writer, author, syndicated columnist, movie critic, lecturer, professor and restaurateur. (And one of these days he plans to settle down and pick a career.) His writings have appeared in many newspapers, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Dallas Times Herald, Baltimore Sun, and Kingsport, Tennessee Time-News, and Review, Icon, and Bon Appetit magazines. For seven years he served as a Commissioner of the City of River Bluff, Kentucky (population 356). He was never indicted.

Reporter Liz Baldi has written for Kentucky Monthly and other publications.

Read an Excerpt

Up All Night at the Coffee Museum
Louisville
Some strive for greatness; others have greatness thrust upon them. In Kentucky, we just take what we can get. That's why we dedicate little back-pocket museums to matters of small consequence.
Which brings us to the Coffee Museum. You might think that, say, Brazil, would be the perfect location for a Coffee Museum. But you're thinking about production. We're talking consumption here. At one time Louisvillians drank more coffee per capita than any other city in America.
We lost that crown long ago. See, our typing doesn't even shake anymore. But during our coffee binge we produced our own coffee king, Jon Conti, who sold more coffee than any coffee manufacturer not on a coast.
Part of being a coffee king means collecting all the paraphernalia that goes along with coffee so Conti acquired quite a collection of mugs and pots and filters. You can see it all at the Jon Conti Coffee Museum.
The Jon Conti Coffee Museum is at 2309 Beuchel By-Pass. Take the Bardstown Rd. exit, exit 16, from I-264. Turn left on Beuchel By-Pass, 1.5 miles from the interstate. The Museum is another 2.3 miles on the right.

Table of Contents

	About the Authors	vi
	Introduction	vii
	Louisville	1
	The Bluegrass	37
	The Mountains	67
	The Pennyrile	95
	The Jackson Purchase	147
	Northern Kentucky	171
	Index	206